The present invention relates to a method to facilitate monitoring the use of a website posted on the Internet by an organization having multiple users accessing the website, and particularly to a method for linking a plurality of website user accounts directly or indirectly related to said organization to facilitate monitoring by authorized personnel of the organization.
Typically, a business enterprise, governmental entity or other organization may have multiple personnel who access the commercial website of a supplier or other entity for the acquisition of goods and/or services. These personnel access the website on behalf of their own organization which, for example, might be a division or subsidiary of a parent company or organization. As a result, the commercial website will have separate accounts for each of the divisions or subsidiaries of the parent. In some cases, the supplier may well have a number of commercial websites offering their goods and services. For example, the supplier may have separate websites in different countries. Because of the number of separate accounts that may be involved it is difficult for an organization to monitor all of the activities of the personnel of its various related organizations in accessing its suppliers' websites.
It is known to provide access on a commercial website to various accounts of an organization that have the same billing address. Presently, however, the data for each account is made available only on an individual basis. In other words the data for the various accounts is not made available in aggregate form. There is therefore a need for a method of aggregating the data of various accounts of related organizations to make such data available for monitoring by authorized personnel of those organizations.